1. Storing Data: Disks and Files
courtesy of Joe Hellerstein for some slides
Jianlin Feng
School of Software
SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY

2. Files and Access Methods
Block diagram of a DBMS
Query Optimization
and Execution
Relational Operators
Files and Access Methods
Buffer Management
Disk Space Management DB
Concurrency
Control and
Recovery 2

3. Files and Access Methods
Disks, Memory, and Files
Query Optimization
and Execution
Relational Operators
Files and Access Methods
Buffer Management
Disk Space Management DB 3

4. Disks and Files DBMS stores information on disks.
Tapes are also used.
Major implications for DBMS design!
READ: transfer data from disk to main memory (RAM).
WRITE: transfer data from RAM to disk.
Both high-cost relative to memory references
Can/should plan carefully! 4

5. Why Not Store Everything in Main Memory?
Costs too much. For ~$1000, PCConnection will sell you either
~80GB of RAM (unrealistic)
~400GB of Flash USB keys (unrealistic)
~180GB of Flash solid-state disk (serious)
~7.7TB of disk (serious)
Main memory is volatile.
Want data to persist between runs. (Obviously!) 5

6. Source: Operating Systems Concepts 5th Edition
The Storage Hierarchy
Smaller, Faster
Main memory (RAM) for currently used data.
Disk for main database (secondary storage).
Tapes for archive (tertiary storage).
The role of Flash (SSD) still unclear
Bigger, Slower
Source: Operating Systems Concepts 5th Edition 6

7. Disks Still the secondary storage device of choice.
Main advantage over tape:
random access vs. sequential.
Fixed unit of transfer
Read/write disk blocks or pages (8K)
Not “random access” (vs. RAM)
Time to retrieve a block depends on location
Relative placement of blocks on disk has major impact on DBMS performance! 7

8. Components of a Disk The platters spin (say, 120 rps).
Spindle
Tracks
Disk head
The platters spin (say, 120 rps).
The arm assembly is moved in or out to position a head on a desired track. Tracks under heads make a cylinder (imaginary!).
Sector
Arm movement
Platters
Only one head reads/writes at any one time.
Arm assembly
Block size is a multiple of sector size (which is fixed). 8

9. Accessing a Disk Page Time to access (read/write) a disk block:
seek time (moving arms to position disk head on track)
rotational delay (waiting for block to rotate under head)
transfer time (actually moving data to/from disk surface)
Seek time and rotational delay dominate.
Seek time varies from 0 to 10msec
Rotational delay varies from 0 to 3msec
Transfer rate around .02msec per 8K block
Key to lower I/O cost: reduce seek/rotation delays! Hardware vs. software solutions? 9

10. Arranging Pages on Disk
`Next’ block concept:
blocks on same track, followed by
blocks on same cylinder, followed by
blocks on adjacent cylinder
Blocks in a file should be arranged sequentially on disk (by `next’), to minimize seek and rotational delay.
For a sequential scan, pre-fetching several pages at a time is a big win! 10

11. Disk Space Management Lowest layer of DBMS, manages space on disk
Higher levels call upon this layer to:
allocate/de-allocate a page
read/write a page
Request for a sequence of pages best satisfied by pages stored sequentially on disk!
Responsibility of disk space manager.
Higher levels don’t know how this is done, or how free space is managed.
Though they may make performance assumptions!
Hence disk space manager should do a decent job. 11

12. Files and Access Methods
Context
Query Optimization
and Execution
Relational Operators
Files and Access Methods
Buffer Management
Disk Space Management DB 12

13. Files of Records Blocks are the interface for I/O, but…
Higher levels of DBMS operate on records, and files of records.
FILE: A collection of pages, each containing a collection of records. Must support:
insert/delete/modify record
fetch a particular record (specified using record id)
scan all records (possibly with some conditions on the records to be retrieved)
Typically implemented as multiple OS “files”
Or “raw” disk space 13

14. Unordered (Heap) Files
Collection of records in no particular order.
As file shrinks/grows, disk pages (de)allocated
To support record level operations, we must:
keep track of the pages in a file
keep track of free space on pages
keep track of the records on a page
There are many alternatives for keeping track of this.
We’ll consider two. 14

15. Heap File Implemented as a List
Data
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Full Pages
Header
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Pages with
Free Space
The header page id and Heap file name must be stored someplace.
Database “catalog”
Each page contains 2 `pointers’ plus data. 15

16. Heap File Implemented as a List (Cont.)
Data
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Full Pages
Header
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Pages with
Free Space
One disadvantage
Virtually all pages will be on the free list if records are of variable length, i.e., every page may have some free bytes if we like to keep each record in a single page. 16

17. Heap File Using a Page Directory
Data
Page 1
Page 2
Page N
Header
Page
DIRECTORY
The directory is itself a collection of pages; each page can hold several entries.
The entry for a page can include the number of free bytes on the page.
To insert a record, we can search the directory to determine which page has enough space to hold the record. 17

18. Indexes (a sneak preview)
A Heap file allows us to retrieve records:
by specifying the rid (record id), or
by scanning all records sequentially
Sometimes, we want to retrieve records by specifying the values in one or more fields, e.g.,
Find all students in the “CS” department
Find all students with a gpa > 3
Indexes are file structures that enable us to answer such value-based queries efficiently. 18

19. Record Formats: Fixed Length
Base address (B)
Address = B+L1+L2
Information about field types same for all records in a file; stored in system catalogs.
Finding i’th field done via arithmetic. 19

20. Record Formats: Variable Length
Two alternative formats (# fields is fixed):
F F F F4 $ $ $ $
Fields Delimited by Special Symbols
F F F F4
Array of Field Offsets
Second offers direct access to i’th field, efficient storage
of nulls (special don’t know value); small directory overhead. 20

21. Page Formats: Fixed Length Records
Slot 1
Slot 1
Slot 2
Slot 2
. . .
Free
Space
. . .
Slot N
Slot N
Slot M N 1
. . . 1 1 M M
number
of records
number
of slots
PACKED
UNPACKED, BITMAP
Record id = <page id, slot #>. In first alternative, moving records for free space management changes rid; may not be acceptable. 21

22. Page Formats: Variable Length Records
slot’s format: <record offset, record length>
Rid = (i,N)
Page i
Rid = (i,2)
Data Area
Rid = (i,1)
Free Space 20 16 24 N
Pointer
to start
of free
space N
# slots
SLOT DIRECTORY
Can move records on page without changing rid; so, attractive for fixed-length records too. 22

23. Slotted page: a detailed view
# of slots
Pointer
to start
of free
space
Slot directory 4 8 2 13 8 16 24
What’s the biggest tuple you can add?
Needs 2 bytes of slot space
x bytes of storage

24. Files and Access Methods
Context
Query Optimization
and Execution
Relational Operators
Files and Access Methods
Buffer Management
Disk Space Management DB 24

25. Buffer Management in a DBMS
Page Requests from Higher Levels
BUFFER POOL A X C
copy of disk page
free frame
MAIN MEMORY
DISK DB
choice of frame dictated
by replacement policy
disk page A
Data must be in RAM for DBMS to operate on it!
BufMgr hides the fact that not all data is in RAM 25

26. When a Page is Requested ...
Buffer pool information table contains: <frame#, pageid, pin_count, dirty>
If requested page is not in pool:
Choose a frame for replacement. Only “un-pinned” pages are candidates!
If frame “dirty”, write current page to disk
Read requested page into frame
Pin the page and return its address.
If requests can be predicted (e.g., sequential scans)
pages can be pre-fetched several pages at a time! 26

27. More on Buffer Management
Requestor of page must eventually:
unpin it
indicate whether page was modified via dirty bit.
Page in pool may be requested many times,
a pin _count is used.
To pin a page: pin_count++
A page is a candidate for replacement iff pin_count == 0 (“unpinned”)
Concurrency Control (CC) & recovery may do additional I/Os upon replacement.
Write-Ahead Log protocol; more later! 27

28. Buffer Replacement Policy
Frame is chosen for replacement by a replacement policy:
Least-recently-used (LRU), MRU, Clock, …
Policy can have big impact on #I/O’s;
Depends on the access pattern. 28

29. LRU Replacement Policy
Least Recently Used (LRU)
track time each frame last unpinned (end of use),
by using a queue of pointers to frames with pin_count 0.
replace the frame which has the earliest unpinned time
Very common policy: intuitive and simple
Works well for repeated accesses to popular pages 29

30. Problem of LRU Problem: Sequential flooding An illustrative situation:
LRU + repeated sequential scans.
An illustrative situation:
suppose a buffer pool has 10 frames,
and the file to be scanned has 11 frames;
then using LRU, every scan of the file will result in reading every page of the file.

31. “Clock” Replacement Policy
B(p)
C(1)
D(1)
An approximation of LRU
Has similar behavior but less overhead
Arrange frames into a cycle, store one reference bit per frame
Can think of this as the 2nd chance bit
When pin_count reduces to 0, turn on reference bit (ref bit).
When replacement necessary: do for each frame in cycle { if (pin_count == 0 && ref bit is on) turn off ref bit; // 2nd chance else if (pin_count == 0 && ref bit is off) choose this page for replacement; } until a page is chosen; 31

32. DBMS vs. OS File System
OS does disk space & buffer mgmt: why not let OS manage these tasks?
A DBMS can often predict page reference patterns more accurately than an OS.
Most page references are generated by higher-level operations such as sequential scan.
adjust replacement policy, and pre-fetch pages based on page reference patterns in typical DB operations.
A DBMS also requires the ability to explicitly force a page to disk.
For realizing Write-Ahead Log protocol 32

33. System Catalogs Catalogs are themselves stored as relations!
For each relation:
name, file location, file structure (e.g., Heap file)
attribute name and type, for each attribute
index name, for each index
integrity constraints
For each index:
structure (e.g., B+ tree) and search key fields
For each view:
view name and definition
Plus statistics, authorization, buffer pool size, etc.
Catalogs are themselves stored as relations! 33

34. Attr_Cat(attr_name, rel_name, type, position)
Attribute_Cat
string 1
rel_name
Attribute_Cat
string 2
type
Attribute_Cat
string 3
position
Attribute_Cat
integer 4
sid
Students
string 1
name
Students
string 2
login
Students
string 3
age
Students
integer 4
gpa
Students
real 5
fid
Faculty
string 1
fname
Faculty
string 2
sal
Faculty
real 3 34

35. Summary Disks provide cheap, non-volatile storage.
Better random access than tape, worse than RAM
Arrange data to minimize seek and rotation delays.
Depends on workload!
Buffer manager brings pages into RAM.
Page pinned in RAM until released by requestor.
Dirty pages written to disk when frame replaced (sometime after requestor unpins the page).
Choice of frame to replace based on replacement policy.
Tries to pre-fetch several pages at a time. 35

36. Summary (Contd.) DBMS vs. OS File Support
DBMS needs non-default features
Careful timing of writes, control over prefetch
Variable length record format
Direct access to i’th field and null values.
Slotted page format
Variable length records and intra-page reorg 36

37. Summary (Contd.)
DBMS “File” tracks collection of pages, records within each.
Pages with free space identified using linked list or directory structure
Indexes support efficient retrieval of records based on the values in some fields.
Catalog relations store information about relations, indexes and views. 37